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ANTHRO

Humans face essentially the same adaptive challenges as all organisms but are unique for having successfully adapted to virtually every environment on Earth. The resulting diversity of phenotypes and cultures¿past and present¿is key to understanding how interactions with environments shape the economic, social, and cultural lives of hunter-gatherers, pastoralists and agriculturalists. This course surveys the range of human adaptations from an ecological and evolutionary perspective to understand human adaptive capacity and vulnerability to climate change.

Last offered: Autumn 2012

ANTHRO 262:Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Problems (ANTHRO 162)

The social and cultural consequences of contemporary environmental problems. The impact of market economies, development efforts, and conservation projects on indigenous peoples, emphasizing Latin America. The role of indigenous grass roots organizations in combating environmental destruction and degradation of homeland areas.

Last offered: Spring 2016

ANTHRO 263:Conservation and Evolutionary Ecology (ANTHRO 163)

Environmental degradation resulting from human behavior, and what can be done about it. Patterns of interaction between people and environments, and why they vary over time and space. Topics include adaptation and behavior, resource acquisition and utilization, conflicts of interest, collective action problems, conspicuous consumption, waste, land management, and public policy.

Languages around the world are dying at such a rapid rate that the next century could see half of the world's 6800 languages and cultures become extinct unless action is taken now. This course looks at how and why languages die, and what is lost from a culture when that occurs. We will investigate how this trend can be reversed by methods of language documentation and description, the use of innovative technologies, multimodal fieldwork, writing dictionaries and grammars for different audiences, language planning, and data creation, annotation, preservation, and dissemination. We will focus on a number of current programs around the world to revitalize languages. Finally, the course will examine ethical modes of fieldwork within endangered language communities, and the possibilities of successful collaborations and capacity building, focusing especially on Northern California Indian peoples and their languages.

This interdisciplinary course explores natural resource extraction from multiple conceptual perspectives. Logging and non-timber resource harvesting practices are examined through ecological dynamics of species and community life histories, natural and anthropogenic disturbance regimes and resilience and recovery to diverse perturbations through alternative stable states. Using a political ecology lens, we then examine historical and current policies and practices aimed to manage terrestrial resource use and extraction: maximum sustained yield, community-based forest management, certification systems, payment for ecosystem services and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). Through problem sets and lab/field exercises, we employ quantitative ecological measurements and experiments coupled with quantitative and qualitative methods and analyses used to assess socio-economic drivers and ecological impacts. Diverse benefits/costs imparted throughout the supply chain - from extraction to consumer ¿ are explored across temporal and spatial scales with local to global agents. No Prerequisites: course or foundation in Ecology, Community Ecology, and/or Ecosystem Ecology strongly suggested.

Seminar. The state, private sector, development agencies, and NGOs in development and conservation of tropical land use. Focus is on the socioeconomic and political drivers of resource extraction and agricultural production. Case studies used to examine the local-to-global context from many disciplines. Are maps and analyses used for gain, visibility, accountability, or contested terrain? How are power dynamics, land use history, state-private sector collusion, and neoliberal policies valued? What are the local and extra-local responses?

Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5

2019-2020 Winter

ANTHRO 266A:Semiotics for Ethnography (ANTHRO 166A)

This workshop-style seminar introduces students to core theories and concepts in linguistic and semiotic anthropology. Examining current theoretical innovations in this field of study, the course explores the multivalent relationships between language and political authority, discourse and technology, and speech and material infrastructures. Emphasis is placed on how semiotic approaches provide tools for ethnographic analysis, and students will learn how to use semiotic concepts for their own research projects.

Terms: Spr
| Units: 3

2019-2020 Spring

ANTHRO 268A:Risky Environments: The Nature of Disaster (ANTHRO 168A)

This seminar explores topics including environmental movements and countercultures, human agency and geoengineering ecotourism, and indigenous perspectives of changing climates to query how humans view `nature¿ in terms of stability, instability, risk and disaster in the 21st century. Case studies draw upon a broad range of geographical regions including the Arctic, Iceland, Australia, and the Americas. Discussions will draw upon film portrayals and interviews with researchers in addition to readings.

Last offered: Winter 2011

ANTHRO 269:The Ecology of Cuisine: Food, Nutrition, and the Evolution of the Human Diet (ANTHRO 169)

This course is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding human food consumption and nutrition, incorporating biological, evolutionary, ecological and social perspectives. Topics include a broad survey of primate diets and their physiological and behavioral correlates; fossil and archaeological evidence for early human diets; adaptations to dietary shifts since the Neolithic; infant and early child feeding practices and their role in shaping human social arrangements, metabolic syndrome, food security, food taboos; the origins of spices; cultural diversity in the social uses and meanings of food and the sharing of food; gathering, hunting and locavorism as high hipster cuisine. Emphasis is on understanding the diversity of human foodways through time and space: how biology, culture, and ecology interact to shape the food we eat, and how the food we eat shapes us.

This cross-disciplinary course surveys the history and prehistory of human ecological dynamics in Australia, drawing on geology, climatology, archaeology, geography, ecology and anthropology to understand the mutual dynamic relationships between the continent and its inhabitants. Topics include anthropogenic fire and fire ecology, animal extinctions, aridity and climate variability, colonization and spread of Homo sapiens, invasive species interactions, changes in human subsistence and mobility throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene as read through the archaeological record, the totemic geography and social organization of Aboriginal people at the time of European contact, the ecological and geographical aspects of the "Dreamtime", and contemporary issues of policy relative to Aboriginal land tenure and management.